Java Language Support for Visual Studio Code has landed

Java language server is an implementation of the language server protocol for Java. If you recall, language server protocol provides a common way for editors and IDEs to integrate with language smartness providers. By design, all of the language tooling magic happens on the Java language server, and can provide same level of smartness to tools that support the protocol. In fact, we are working with communities such as Eclipse Che to make this server available for their tools.

As of Friday, September 16th, we have released our Java language support extension to Visual Studio Code marketplace. This initial release comes with a modest feature list that will make VS Code more fun to use for Java developers. Here is a list of features supported in this release. (Note, the Java language support extension makes use of the Java language server.)

Maven based project support

As you type compilation error reporting

Code completion

Javadoc hovers

Code outline

Code navigation

Code lens for references

Highlights

Code formatting

You should expect to see more deployments with different tools in the near future, in the meanwhile enjoy Java support on VS Code.